


Harry Potter and the Peverell's Secret

by CB_Magique



Series: Harry Potter and the Cursed Children [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Break Up, F/M, Fix-It, HP: EWE, Mpreg, Muggle Culture, Muggle/Wizard Relations, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pregnancy, Pureblood Culture, Racism, Regressive Magical Society, Sexism, Slow Build, Wizard crime story jarringly juxtaposed with domesticity, mentions of euthanasia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-07
Updated: 2017-02-21
Packaged: 2018-09-15 13:35:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9237377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CB_Magique/pseuds/CB_Magique
Summary: Harry thinks his life and his prospects are secure into the future but as the millennium turns the stability and security he deserved begins to shake. His life as an adult is going to be no less stressful than his life growing up as he has to juggle his relationship with Ginny, his job as an auror, and his impulsive desire to do right by everyone even if he risks breaking the law and his relationships. But, of course, nothing in the Wizarding World could even be that simple. Magic has deep secrets hiding in every seam of its fabric and each one he uncovers takes him deeper and deeper.





	1. 10 Seconds After New Year

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first Harry Potter fic. This is not a plea for you to be nice, just a disclaimer saying that I have never attempted to write for this fandom before and I'm anxious about my performance. As much as I love Harry Potter, I never felt compelled to write for it... until the DH epilogue made me mad and Cursed Child made me even madder. So this is pretty much my fix-it fic. 
> 
> Please read the tags. As well as giving you an early inkling of what this story is going to be like, I'm probably going to add tags if something comes up in a future chapter but I'll also do chapter-specific trigger warnings if something major comes up that the tags can't quite prepare you for. 
> 
> Please comment because I crave feedback. Want more? Fix something? Add tags? Tell me.

On the night of the 31st of December 1999 Harry and Ginny sat together on the small sofa in Harry’s little London flat with a bottle of champagne on the coffee table. Ginny placed next to it a small object that looked like a silver balloon as the minute hand on the wall clock ticked slightly closer to midnight. Harry leaned forward to pick it up and frowned as he turned it in his fingers.

“What’s this?”

"It’s New Year’s Dream,” Ginny answered, putting her wine glass down to refill it. “Some of the joke shops and toy shops in Diagon Ally have been selling them for this New Year, since it’s special and all.”

“Not everyone gets to experience the turn of the millennium,” Harry agreed, lips quirking whimsically. He put it down again and took a swig of champagne. “I hope it isn’t one of George’s.”

“Don’t worry, it’s one of the safe ones. In the ten seconds leading up to New Year’s Day it blows up and then bursts into something nice.” She pulled her feet up and leaned into his side and he adjusted to support her weight. “It’s very quiet.”

“Sorry. I think there’s still time to go back to your family, if that’s what you’d prefer.”

“No, I like it,” Ginny sighed. “Just the two of us together for dinner and drinks on New Year’s Eve. I wouldn’t get that at home.”

She tilted her head on his shoulder and Harry turned to press his lips against hers gently.

“It’s going to be a special night,” he promised with the mysterious certainty of someone who knew something the other didn’t.

“I think it’s already special,” she said, placing her free hand over his jaw to pull him down for a deeper, longer kiss. “You and me together, a new year, a new century, a new millennium—I feel like I’ve made it.”

Harry grinned. He leaned forward for another kiss but Ginny suddenly turned away.

"Look, it’s starting!”

The silver balloon began to expand and rose as it grew. The clock ticked away the last ten seconds to midnight, Ginny and Harry breathlessly counting down along with the rest of the country.

…three, two, one…

The balloon burst, throwing golden glowing glitter across the room and in its place the words ‘Happy New Year 2000’ sparkled in golden floating cursive. Popping and banging from fireworks across the city punctuated their private celebration and even though they were alone Harry and Ginny cheered and laughed, throwing their hands up to catch the glitter that disappeared as soon as they touched it. They looked at each other, smiling lovingly through the shimmer and came together for their first kiss of the New Year.

They could not have known that in the ten seconds following the turn of the millennium, ten things happened that would change their lives:

 

**One**

Sybil Trelawney, in the middle of divining a fortune for the New Year up in her lonely tower, broke her favourite teacup after being hit with a sudden vision so enormous that she collapsed.

 

**Two**

At a seemingly ordinary muggle house, a small child who was up past her bedtime trying to get a glimpse of the adult New Year’s celebration fell off the ceiling and broke both her arm and a table.

 

**Three**

A disgruntled administrative assistant at St Mungo’s listened to the festive sounds of cheers and fireworks in the distance while she sat in a small office with a desk-load of backlogged paperwork. She looked up to her only window to get a glimpse of the sparkling fireworks that she was bitterly missing and in her moment of distraction she erroneously filed a sensitive document for publication.

 

**Four**

Kreacher polished the last of the silverware in 12 Grimmauld Place. He kept up the empty townhouse in a more or less tidy condition, following the shrilly directions of Walburga Black demanding the place be ‘lifted from such disgrace’ for the New Year. He collected the rag and polish and dumped them back in the cleaning box he’d carried them in but when he lifted it he was suddenly overcome with a great fatigue and his weak little hands dropped the box. He stared at the rags and brushes and tins strewn over the kitchen floor and wailed miserably.

 

**Five**

Wizards and witches at a high society New Year’s ball gasped and stared when Astoria Greengrass collapsed on the floor. Her chaperone, Draco Malfoy, to whom she had been betrothed for over a fortnight, dropped to his knees at her side and pulled her into his lap. He reached over her body to grasp her hand and paused to look at a wet patch on her dress that his knuckles brushed. There was blood there.

 

**Six**

The Weasley’s lit their own New Year’s fireworks at The Burrow, where the family had gathered in the garden to admire them and fully intended to enjoy them completely until Hermione and George were both violently ill at once.  

 

**Seven**

Ginny and Harry slowly pulled away from their kiss. She sighed and he chuckled at the warm tickle of her breath on his lips. Her eyelids fluttered and she willed them closed in anticipation of another kiss but they flew open when a small, velvet box was pushed into her hand. She looked down in surprise as Harry, with his hand to steady hers, opened the box. A squarish red jewel on a gold ring shone mildly but for the dawning significance it carried it might as well have blinded her. She drew her gaze back up to Harry’s eyes and smile. He opened his mouth but she flung herself forward and sealed it with another kiss before he could pop the question.

 

**Eight**

At the public fireworks display in Carkitt Market one of Dr Filibuster’s Millennium Specials – formulated exclusively for New Year’s Day 2000 – misfired over the heads of the crowd and smashed through a window at the House-Elf Placement Agency.

 

**Nine**

Rubeus Hagrid patted the little trinket he’d hung on a string around his neck as he looked up at the Hogwarts fireworks and glittering charms that Filius Flitwick loved to cast during celebrations. He considered the broken ring lucky – it had been a miraculous find in the forest, only the barest glint gave away its location buried in the dirt and detritus. Suddenly out of the corner of his eye he spotted something ghostly and turned his head, thinking it was only one of Hogwarts’ many ghosts. His eyes widened and he cried out in a fright at the sight of his father sitting on his shoulder and smiling back at him.

 

**Ten**

Vernon Dursley had a heart attack. 


	2. The Morning Afterwards

Lucius Malfoy stormed down the corridors of St Mungo’s. Although he held himself rigidly and his expression was set to stone fury burned from his eyes and his aura, sending passing mediwizards and mediwitches scampering out of his way. He pulled his wand out as he approached a private room and spelled it to open for him so that he didn’t have to stop his imperial march. Two of the three occupants of the room gasped and stared like frightened rabbits at him with his wand out pointed in their direction. Draco Malfoy and Daphne Greengrass sat on either side of the bed each holding one of Astoria’s pale hands in theirs. All of a sudden nobody could breathe, as if all of the air had been sucked out of the room when Lucius opened the door and the tension pulled taut like a wire.

Then Lucius waved his wand over his shoulder, cutting the tension. The door slammed shut, no doubt with a silencing charm upon it. While Draco and Daphne relaxed, their shoulders loosening and their grip loosening the unconscious woman between them, the feeling was not to last. Lucius sheathed his wand back in his cane and slammed the end on the floor with a loud bang that caused them to nearly flinch out of their seats. They both waited, neither of them brave enough to breach the silence while Lucius turned his trembling stare on Draco. When the Malfoy Patriarch did speak, only one word came out in a deceptively calm and gentle voice:

“Miscarriage…”

Draco swallowed a lump in his throat and stood up. “Father—”

“Don’t speak!” Lucius suddenly screamed at him. Draco froze. “I don’t care for your dribbling excuses! If you had truly meant well you would have behaved yourself from the outset! How much more humiliation do you want to bring upon your family?”

He paused, heaving shallow, angry breaths. At Draco’s silence he continued: “Well? Did you feel like you haven’t already embarrassed me, your mother, and the Greengrass’s enough? We all spent months of planning and arrangements for the respectable honour of securing the eldest Greengrass as your future spouse only for you to ungratefully spurn her hand to lie between her younger sister’s legs! What gave you the audacity to believe you could spare a privilege like that after all that our family had suffered?”

“It’s really not so—” Daphne began.

“This is between me and my son!” Lucius snapped, not even sparing her a glance. “It took considerable effort for your mother and me to diffuse this situation before it became scandalous but clearly that was in vain. Not only have you cavorted shamelessly with a woman to whom you were not betrothed you have also impregnated her out of wedlock! What kind of boy did I raise?!”

“Don’t panic, father,” Draco implored. His gaze darted to Lucius’ cane where his father’s grip was so tight on the handle the knuckles looked as though they were going to erupt out of his skin. “We’ve already made arrangements to wed privately in February.”

“Don’t be a fool!” Lucius whacked his cane over Draco’s head, quick as a whip. “If she was still pregnant people would notice! The Daily Prophet’s reporters are not idiots; they can count the months! You’re lucky this… _thing_ has already befallen you or you would have us all scrambling to clean up after you dragged our family further through the mud.”

Draco fumed. Anger flushed his cheeks and he took a breath to shout back but a small voice, weak and unclear, dragged him back. The Malfoy’s turned to the bed where Astoria was trying to sit up. Daphne kept holding her down and insisting that she get more rest but Astoria’s glare was fixed solely on Lucius Malfoy.

“What did you say?” he hissed, puffing like an indignant peacock.

“I said: I’m still pregnant.”

“How could you possibly know?”

Astoria faltered there but Daphne interjected: “She must have heard. Probably dozing in and out of consciousness. The mediwitch who oversaw her treatment confirmed with Draco and me that they halted the miscarriage and reversed some of the effects but she’ll need to stay for more treatment to stabilise the pregnancy.”

Lucius’ jaw clenched tightly. It took a few seconds but he eventually managed to ground out: “Well then, I would say that the appropriate course of action ould be obvious. You will request to abort.”

“I will not!” Astoria protested.

“You must!” Lucius insisted. “And then afterwards, we may have to rethink our arrangements with your family.”

“Father, no!” Draco argued, stepping between him and Astoria and pushing him back with a hand on his chest. Lucius looked at the spot on his clothes in disgust as if Draco had just thrown a handful of mud.

“You dare to assault your own father?”

“I won’t let you do this! I understand why you’re angry but I’m a grown man. I will manage it.”

“You will not manage it!” Lucius roared, punctuating it with another strike of the cane over Draco’s shoulders. “Your ‘management’ has gotten you this far! Why should I trust you to ‘manage it’ any further?”

“You can’t choose for us,” Astoria added angrily. “I won’t abort so if you don’t want your first grandchild to be a bastard you have to give us your blessing. Believe me, Mr Malfoy, that those are your only options. Nobody in the Ministry is going to turn a blind eye or waive legal procedure for you anymore so if we don’t choose this you can’t make us.”

Lucius spluttered ineffectually, turning beet red in the cheeks. The left side of Astoria’s lips quirked in a one-sided smirk once it became apparent that he had no counter. In indignant humiliation, he spat out: “That’s Lord Malfoy to you!”

“Father, that’s enough,” Draco said, more exasperated at this point than anything else. “Astoria needs to rest before the next round of treatment, so you need to leave. We can discuss this later.”

Lucius glared at his son, pinching his face in disgust. “Very well. I’ll be expecting you home for tea and you can be well assured that this is not over.”

He turned on his heel and left the way he came in a flurry of couture black robes. Draco sighed and lowered himself back to his small chair, feeling as heavy as a large sack of rocks. His left hand went to rub the ache on his shoulder where the cane had struck. Astoria’s hand came to rest on his with a soothing feather-light touch. He smiled at her but he couldn’t make it reach his eyes. On her other side, Daphne stared at him with a pokerfaced expression but pursed lips.

“Don’t let him win,” Astoria said quietly. “No matter how many times he hits you—you’re not a child anymore that he can beat into submission. I’m not ashamed of being in love with you and Daphne isn’t embarrassed about being turned down, are you Daphne?”

“Not at all,” she replied with the casual air of someone tamping down just a little bit of bitterness. “I’m glad that you and Draco have each other. If anyone can assure you the best care that money can buy, it’s Malfoy.” She stroked her sister’s hair lovingly, self-assured by her own reasoning.

“I take it that means I can rely on you,” Draco asked. “You’re definitely my ally in this?”

“Of course,” Daphne nodded. “It’s going to be an uphill battle. Your old fart isn’t the only problem we have.” Draco snorted trying to hold back a laugh. “You know well that our parents aren’t keen on marrying Astoria off.”

“I’d never marry if they had their way,” Astoria complained.

“They’re just worried about your health,” Draco said sympathetically, “and if I’m to be completely honest, I am too.”

“Oh, no,” Astoria moaned. “You can’t. I already told your father that I won’t do it.”

Draco took her hand in his and kissed her long, delicate fingers. “Listen, Astoria, I do love you but you don’t have to do this. We can find another way to convince our parents and if all else fails, I don’t know, we’ll elope.”

“Don’t be silly,” she chuckled, slipping her fingers from his to caress his cheek. “You wouldn’t stand for elopement, that’s why we’re doing this the proper way. And I know you’re not desperate for the next Malfoy heir, otherwise you would have stayed with Daphne—shush, I know you were thinking about it. I’m not doing this just for you, I’m doing it for me too. I love you too and I want to love _our_ boy just as much.”

Draco smirked and gently rubbed the sheets over her belly. “What if it’s a girl?”

“I’m making a boy,” Astoria insisted, closing that conversation.

* * *

 

 

The sun was already up by the time Harry started to stir. The light streaming through the curtains was bright enough to light his bedroom but then it quickly dimmed as the clouds wrestled the sun back behind their barrier. Harry only saw the change in light through blurred vision and thought nothing of it. He just snuggled deeper into his sheets and blankets and wrapped himself comfortably around Ginny, quite content to spend the next hour or so lying skin-to-skin with her. Then suddenly there was a shrill ring throughout his apartment.

“What’s that?” Ginny asked in alarm that was somewhat dampened by sleep. She wriggled out of his embrace to peek over the covers and see if she’d find the offending object in the room.

“Just the phone,” Harry said, rubbing his eyes, “probably. Who could be calling at this hour?” he wondered, reaching for his glasses on the nightstand.

“It’s almost eleven.”

With his glasses on, the face of his alarm clock came into focus and Harry could see that she was right. It was a perfectly reasonable hour to be making a phone call, which meant he had no real reason not to answer it. He groaned as he sat up and swung his legs out of bed. His slippers hopped out from under the bed to slip onto his feet and his dressing robe draped itself over his shoulders as he shuffled out of his bedroom and down the hall where the phone was hanging close to the kitchen. However, to his frustration, just as he reached it the ringing stopped.

“It’s so demanding,” Ginny commented. Harry turned to her and smiled at the sight. She was leaning against the bedroom doorframe with a blanket wrapped around her and wearing Harry’s socks to keep her toes warm against the cold wooden floor.

“You mean the phone?” he asked.

“Yeah. The way it rings so loudly like that. Who needs your attention so badly that it has to behave like that on a public holiday?”

“Phones do that all the time,” Harry chuckled. “It doesn’t matter who’s calling or when. Since they aren’t magic, they don’t know who to prioritise.”

Ginny’s brow furrowed and she frowned. Before Harry could ask her what was wrong she said: “Why do you insist on having it, then? It doesn’t seem like a very efficient way to communicate—you wouldn’t know the difference between a salesman, a friend or a ministry official right away. And anyway, how often do you need to call muggles or have them call you?”

“I guess I don’t really use it often,” he replied with a shrug. “Just because I don’t have muggle friends to call doesn’t mean—” the phone rang again “—oh, they must be calling again.”

He picked the phone off the cradle, flashing Ginny a reassuring smile and then responding to the caller with: “Hello, Harry Potter speaking.”

Then suddenly his face fell. Ginny began to glare at the phone with an air of suspicion as a few silent seconds followed the cheery greeting.

“Oh…” Harry finally said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Erm... help me out?! Very awkward chapter and I'm not sure if reading is as weird as writing it felt.


	3. Way Back When

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: white-on-white racism.

**Way Back When**

 

Harry wasn’t sure what had compelled him to come. He hadn’t seen a glimpse of the Dursley’s in almost two years. There was no love lost between him and these people and quite frankly he was surprised that any one of them would want to ever see him again any more than he wanted to ever see them again. He looked up at the block letters hanging over the entryway like teeth: ST ALBERT’S GENERAL HOSPITAL then shoved his hands in his jacket pockets and walked up the steps to the automatic doors.

The receptionist in the foyer directed him to the right ward and from there another receptionist gave him directions to a private room. He dragged his feet down the corridor alone, wondering if he could just pretend he got lost and use that as excuse to go home at this point but the opportunity wilted away when he spotted Dudley Dursley loitering up ahead. He was still as huge as ever yet Harry was surprised to see him. It dawned on him that he had actually been curious to see what his cousin was like after all this time. Whether he’d kept his boxing bulk or sunk back into obesity like a melting lump of lard. The real answer lay somewhere in between; his shoulders and arms were still massive and muscular but there was something of a beer belly developing in the front. He looked up and gave Harry half an awkward smile, which Harry returned just to be polite. His feet kept going automatically and before he knew it he was standing within arm’s reach of Dudley.

A minute of awkward silence passed between them where they just stood with their hands in their pockets and didn’t make eye contact. Then Dudley cleared his throat and began with: “I’m glad you came.”

“Sure thing,” Harry replied even though what he really wanted to say was ‘Why?’

“I mean it, though. You know, after everything, I didn’t really expect you to show up and you didn’t have to.” Dudley paused to purse his lips and then added: “You look good.”

“Thanks,” Harry muttered, a bit taken aback by the confession. “But if you didn’t think I’d come, why’d you ask?”

Dudley shrugged. “Just decided to take a chance, I suppose. And also because I thought you could help?”

“Help with what?”

Dudley turned to gaze into the open door beside him. Harry took a peek as well and almost immediately recoiled back behind the wall. Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia were in there, Petunia every bit the pitiful image of a grieving wife and Vernon looking somewhat deflated tied to beeping and whirring life support machines. It made Harry feel sick from his stomach to his throat but another part of him flared angrily for a moment. He tried to ignore it but it niggled at him incessantly. In a way it felt so unfair. After all that couple had put him through—the miserable life they forced him to lead—they had no right to look so pitiful. No right at all to be in a state to beg for sympathy from him.

“Dad’s not doing so well,” Dudley explained. “The doctors are saying that he’ll need to have surgery but we shouldn’t worry because the bypass operation doesn’t usually kill anyone. But I just…”

“You’re still worried,” Harry guessed.

“Yeah. I just thought that maybe you could do something to make it easier for him or even fix it all up, no cutting necessary.”

“How do you think I’m going to do that?” Harry asked, annoyed.

“Can’t you just magic something up? Wave your wand or make a potion that’ll make it go away?”

“No, I can’t do that,” Harry snapped. “Even if you’re a wizard you have to train to do that, just like muggle doctors have to train to be doctors.”

“Then get some wizard doctor to come here and help.”

“I can’t do that either!”

“Why not?” Dudley’s voice rose in frustration and Harry instinctively took a step back and leaned away from an anticipated blow. “What’s the point of magic being real if you can’t do anything important with it or help people?”

“We do plenty of important things with magic,” Harry argued, “and it helps people all the time.”

“Then why can’t it help dad now? You… I know you don’t have any reason to be nice to us or even talk to us and I’m sorry.”

Harry’s jaw dropped. Did he just hear what he thought he’d heard coming from Dudley’s mouth?

“I’m sorry we were so awful to you but dad’s dying, Harry!”

Harry winced at the way Dudley’s voice hitched over the word ‘dying’ and how he choked on a sob at the end. He couldn’t look at his cousin. He didn’t like seeing the Dursley’s so fragile and vulnerable. A couple of nurses had to get past Dudley to enter Vernon’s room since he was still large enough to take up almost all of the space in a corridor.

“Excuse me,” one of them said politely, shifting towards the wall as if he would actually try to squeeze between it and Dudley. Dudley muttered a bumbling apology and got out of the way. Harry took a relieved breath during the distraction and waited until the nurses were well inside the room to say anything more.

“Sorry to disappoint you but it’s a lot more complicated than you think. It’s not just me, this is something that the magical community just isn’t allowed to do,” he explained, adopting the formal persona of Auror Potter laying down the law simply because it was his job and nothing more complicated than that. “There are statutes against the unnecessary use of magic on muggles and avoiding bereavement isn’t a permissible excuse to break them, especially if muggles already have their own solutions. Do you understand, Dudley? It is _illegal_ for any witch or wizard to interfere in muggle affairs. You just have to deal with your own problems, just like we have to deal with ours.”

Dudley didn’t immediately have a response. He breathed heavily, anger still sizzling under his beefy face but he understood the situation enough to retrain himself. He kept glaring at Harry, mind whirring to try to think of a counterargument but his thought process was cut short by Petunia coming out of the room with a wet sob. She went right up to him and wrapped her arms around him as far as she could reach. Dudley returned the embrace with a one-armed hug.

“Did something happen, mum?”

“Oh, no, darling. It’s just the nurses,” she said shakily. “They’re taking him away to finish preparing him for surgery, so we won’t be able to see him for a while.”

As if on cue, Vernon’s bed trundled out of the room. They all moved out of the way as the nurses guided him down the hall. Harry tried not to look at anyone – especially Vernon – while Petunia made a horribly pathetic whimper and dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief that was already damp and splotched with mascara. As the bed turned a corner and disappeared from sight, she turned her attention back to her son and with a start finally noticed Harry partially hidden in Dudley’s shadow. Her eyes narrowed and her lips pinched into a tight frown.

“What are you doing here?” she snapped.

“It’s alright mum, I invited him,” Dudley answered but she didn’t take her eyes off Harry.

Harry rolled his shoulders uncomfortably. “It’s like he said.”

“Is that so?” she retorted, her eyebrows rising up toward her hairline. “Are you sure you haven’t just come to laugh at us or revel in your triumph?”

“What’re you talking about?”

“Mum, Harry didn’t do this. He’s not a wizard-doctor.”

“Yeah, that’s right. Don’t be ridiculous.”

Petunia’s nostrils flared as she took a sharp breath and said in a shrilly voice: “But you’re all about the nonsense, aren’t you? Though I suppose I wouldn’t know anything about it but if you could turn me into a frog I don’t see why you couldn’t just make a heart attack happen with a little flick of the wrist. It would tickle your fancy, wouldn’t it? A nice New Year’s present to yourself – getting back at those nasty ‘muggles’ who had to live with you and all of your dreadful capers and funny business-”

“Just what the hell is your bloody problem?!” Harry exploded, yanking his hands out of his pockets throwing them to his sides to fight the urge to go for his wand hidden in his jacket.

“ _My_ problem?” she squawked in a scandalised manner.

“Yes, your problem! And don’t you even dare attempt to blame me or my mum for it because poor little you had to share the air with a couple of magicians. Is that it? Were you jealous that you got to watch us grow up with magic while you got nothing?”

“How could any sensible person be jealous of hooligans like you?! Lily turned into a freak and married an even more disreputable freak to give birth to a disgusting freak-child and you all lived your lives like you’re in a children’s fantasy with teatime around stupid little toadstools and foolish hocus-pocus to make your hair turn blue or whatever!”

“My life in the wizarding world has been nothing like that,” Harry ground out through his teeth, taking a big step towards Petunia and glaring at her right in the eye. She stared right back at him, exhaling like a mad bull. “And neither was my parents’ life. You knew about Voldemort and what happened to all of us and you couldn’t spare a drop of love, or sympathy or even pity. Lily was your _sister_! That’s some shrivelled up heart you’ve got there. Just what happened? What made you hate magic so damn much?!”

And then all of a sudden the answer seemed to just spill right out of her eyes and into his head, at nobody’s volition whatsoever.

* * *

 

 

_Two girls were walking arm in arm up the street in matching tennis skirts and a racquet in each free hand. The younger redhead was listening intently to her older sister as they strode past an open gate and up a garden path to the front door of an unassuming house._

_“Believe me, you’ll love Gainsworth Ladies College,” Petunia was saying with the certainty of experience and the authority of an elder sister. “When you get there I’m going to introduce you to all of my school friends and I’ll show you the best place to eat lunch – there are some really pretty gardens between the buildings. It’s so much bigger than our elementary school.”_

_“What if I get lost?” Lily asked._

_Petunia laughed as she turned the door handle. “Don’t be silly! I’ll be there to help you if you get lost. I know my way around the whole school by now.”_

_They both hurried into the house, hoping that lunch would already be spread out on the kitchen table. However, at the threshold of the kitchen they both stopped. There was no lunch on the kitchen table. Their parents sat together on one side with shocked expressions stunned onto their faces. Their father held one of many letters sent to Lily in the past few weeks. The family had assumed it was a prank and a very persistent one at that even though Lily insisted that they were real but there was no laughing or frustration at the moment. On the other side of the table sat a beaming man in velvet blue robes and a pointed hat._

_“Ah, this little one must be Lily,” he said happily._

_Petunia looked down at her sister, who was staring at the strange man. “What did you do?” she whispered._

_“Nothing!” Lily whispered back._

_The strange man laughed good-naturedly. “I can assure you girls that nobody is in any trouble, none at all. In fact, this is good news. I just popped over to let you know that this wasn’t a silly prank,” he gestured to the letter, “and make sure that we were all on the same page here before the beginning of semester. Lily Evans, you’re a witch.”_

_Well that was simply absurd. Petunia snorted out the beginning of a laugh but pulled it back in when she noticed that there was nary a giggle from anybody else. Her parents’ faces turned from bewilderment to awe and when she looked at Lily her eyes were wide and bright. She had a smile on her face like every wish she had ever wished had been granted to her right then and there and it was everything she knew she deserved. Petunia frowned over a bitter taste in her mouth._

_“Where are you going?” Petunia asked as her mother and Lily started to get out of the car. Their father had parked in an unassuming retail district next to a gate between two boring brick buildings. “I thought we were going to get school stuff.”_

_“We are,” Lily said, “but I’ve got to get my school stuff somewhere else since they won’t have magic books in the regular bookstores. And maybe I can even get an owl since I can have a pet at school. Or could I take the cat?”_

_Lily turned to her mother as she asked, receiving an indulgent look in return. “We’ll see.”_

_Petunia sighed angrily and undid her seatbelt. “Fine!”_

_“Pet, honey,” her father interrupted, “you’re not getting out here. You and I are going to get your school things at Gainsworth.”_

_“What? Why can’t I come?”_

_“Because you’re not allowed,” Lily answered bluntly._

_“Why not?”_

_“It’s a bit complicated, Pet,” her mother said, leaning to look into the car. “Your dad can explain it to you, Lils and I have to run. We’ve got to meet someone to let us in.”_

_The car door closed, leaving Petunia in stuffy silence while her mother and sister walked away. She looked over the back of her seat but her father pulled out of the parking spot and drove away._

_“I ‘spose we’re a bit overdue to have this conversation with you,” her father started. “It’s been happening a bit fast, all of this with Lily going to a different school and being a witch now. There are laws against witches and wizards mingling with us muggles – a Statute of Secrecy, I think he called it – so we have to restrict how involved we get. Your mum and I can go in with Lils to help her out because we’re her parents but they don’t want too many muggles in the wizard world so we aren’t allowed to bring you, unfortunately.”_

_Petunia folded her arms and huffed, thinking of how she very much did not want to be associated with a stupid word like ‘muggle’._

_A bell rang as a large clock on a red brick school building struck one-thirty. Girls in mauve skirts and ties with white shirts were making their way to doors. Petunia was among them, giggling with her friends when smaller girl approached her and tapped her on the elbow. She looked down and blanched at the sight of Julia Gibson. For the last few weeks of summer she hadn’t thought about what she was going to say to Julia, or any of Lily’s other friends for that matter._

_“Hi, Petunia,” Julia said nervously. “Where’s Lily? Is she sick?”_

_“No. She got a scholarship to a fancy boarding school in Scotland.” The family had decided that that was going to be the official line to explain why Lily disappeared off the face of the Earth during semester, though Petunia said it with more venom than her parents did._

_“Oh… she didn’t tell us that. Is she going to write? And will she be back by the holidays?”_

_“She’d have to or our parents would get very cross.”_

_Julia looked down at her shoes scuffing the pavement, thinking. Then she asked: “What’s the school address? Maybe I can write to her.”_

_“I don’t bloody know,” Petunia snapped, turning away sharply and stomping up the stairs. Her heart hammered. How was she going to keep this up?_

_“Mum, Ruth’s on the phone,” Petunia called, opening the kitchen door, “can she come over?”_

_“Close the door!” her mother yelled._

_Petunia looked at her like she was mad for a moment when suddenly something soft and damp landed on her foot. She looked down. There was a fat, red frog sitting on her left foot. She screamed and kicked it off – slipper and all – sending it arcing through the air and landing on the kitchen table, which was covered in more amphibians. More red frogs, orange toads and yellow salamanders were hopping and crawling around the kitchen, mostly concentrated around a suspiciously empty fruit bowl._

_“What the hell?!” Petunia exclaimed._

_“It was an accident,” Lily said as way of an excuse as she tried to round up a couple of salamanders that were trying to scuttle under the pantry door._

_“You just turned all of our fruit into frogs and you call that an accident?!”_

_“They’re not all frogs.”_

_“Petunia, close the door like I said!” their mother snapped. She dived for a little peach-coloured frog that was hopping toward the wide open exit._

_“I just wanted to know if Ruth could come over.”_

_“Of course she can’t come over! What if she sees this?”_

_“I’ll just close the door, tell her it’s a mess in here.”_

_“It’s a bit too risky, dear. How about tomorrow?”_

_“That’s what you said last time Lily did something. I’ll just go over to Ruth’s, then.” Petunia slammed the door, ignoring her mother calling her name admonishingly. She turned on her heel and went back to the phone to relay the new plan and then returned to her room to get her things and the Christmas present she’d gotten for Ruth._

_“You know, I haven’t seen Lily in a really long time,” said one of Petunia’s friends over her milkshake. The four of them were sitting outside the milk bar on a hot summer day where the sun was so glaringly bright that everything around them seemed to just fade away into the light._

_“I told you, Cass, she goes to boarding school in Scotland,” Petunia replied, stabbing her straw into the bottom of her milkshake cup._

_“But she comes back for holidays, doesn’t she?” Ruth asked. “Got to admit, I haven’t even seen much of her over summer or the Christmas holidays.”_

_“She doesn’t go out much anymore, I guess. She’s got fancy boarding school friends to write to and keep up with, can’t waste time with the rest of us anymore.”_

_Her friends laughed. “Oh, Petunia,” May said, “you don’t have to sound so bitter.”_

_“It’s so stupid, though. She didn’t even apply to go, not even in secret, and now mum and dad are all over the moon about Lily and everything Lily does. I failed a subject last semester and they didn’t even care because Lily got good grades at fancy boarding school.”_

_“Well, think of it this way,” Ruth suggested, “it’s in Scotland, so it can’t be that good of a school.”_

_Petunia cracked a smile while her friends giggled meanly._

_“Mum!” Petunia screeched, bringing both her mother and father rushing into the room in a dreadful fright._

_“What is it? What’s happened?” her mother asked._

_“Look!” Petunia pointed to the goldfish aquarium. She had set it up in the living room since there was no room in her little bedroom for it and she was so proud of the stereotypical set-up: little white pebbles covering the bottom, fake plants, a small hide and a model scuba diver blowing bubbles. But all of the goldfish were purple. “Lily did this! You know she must’ve!”_

_“I’m sure it was an accident,” her father tried to say._

_“How could it be an accident?! They were my fish! I saved up all my pocket money to get them and she just comes along and ruins them! And if they stay like this you won’t let my friends come over and look at my fish. So make Lily come back down here and change it!”_

_“Pet, she can’t do that,” her mother said._

_“She can’t do magic outside school until she’s seventeen, remember?” her father added. “At least not on purpose. This has probably been an accident otherwise the Ministry of Magic would have sent one of their little owls.”_

_“Then call the ‘Ministry of Magic’ and ask them to fix Lily’s cock up!”_

_“Language!”_

_“You’re just going to have to live with it,” her mother said with an exasperated sigh. “It’s not easy but this is the law. And purple fish aren’t the worst thing that magic could do to you.”_

_“Oh, no, of course not,” Petunia retorted. “The worst thing that magic could possibly do is turn Lily into a little freak that can just go around ruining other people’s lives and her parents don’t stop her, they just whine about how it’s always got to be an ‘accident’ and it’s her big sister who has to take all the responsibility for everything she fucks up!”_

_Petunia stormed out of the room on the verge of tears, ignoring her father’s loud attempts to discipline her for foul language. She stomped up the stairs and saw Lily, peeking out of her bedroom across the hall from Petunia’s room._

_“I really am sorry,” she said quietly._

_“You suck,” Petunia huffed, going straight to her bedroom and slamming the door. She threw herself onto her bed and buried her face in her pillow. It all wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t fair, it wasn’t fair, it wasn’t fair, it wasn’t fair, it wasn’t fair, it wasn’t fair, it wasn’t fair, it wasn’t fair, it wasn’t fair, it wasn’t fair, it wasn’t fair, it wasn’t fair…_

* * *

 

 

Harry stumbled as though he’d been struck. The surroundings were suddenly too bright. It took several seconds of blinking and gawking to get used to the fluorescent light again and when he did the first thing he did was look around. The corridor was still empty, save for him and the Dursleys. Relieved that he didn’t have to obliviate anyone today, Harry turned back to Petunia and Dudley and the relief sank like a sack of bricks. Petunia’s mouth hung wide open in shock while her face turned a shade redder with each passing second until she exploded on Harry with apoplectic rage.

“HOW DARE YOU! YOU… YOU LITTLE FREAK! YOU MONSTER! HOW DARE YOU TRY SOMETHING LIKE THAT ON ME!?”

She lunged to slap him but Harry skittered out of the way. Dudley gawked at them in bewilderment but didn’t get to ask any questions before Harry ran away. Petunia’s words rang in his ears like an echo as she screamed:

“WE SHOULD HAVE LEFT YOU IN THAT CUPBOARD WHERE YOU BELONGED! OR BETTER YET, LET YOU DIE ON THE DOORSTEP LIKE YOU DESERVED!”


	4. The Orphan

Harry’s head spun. He wandered around the hospital like he been confounded, unsure how he’d gotten there and now unsure how to get out. The walls blurred into each other and he couldn’t remember what floor he was on. Without even thinking he started walking up a staircase rather than down. Faraway voices buzzed in his head, familiar in a way: a woman screaming, a child crying. He shook his head and started to hum to drown out all of the unwanted noise and memories but as the voices became clearer he realised that they weren’t actually in his head.

"YOU PETULANT LITTLE BRAT! HOW DARE YOU TRY SOMETHING LIKE THIS?! WE’RE ALL TRYING TO HELP YOU HERE AND YOU JUST THROW OUR EFFORTS IN OUR FACES! PUT IT BACK ON!”

All she got in response was a louder cry.

“STOP SCREAMING! YOU TOOK IT OFF, YOU CAN PUT IT BACK ON!”

Harry hurried up the rest of the stairs and took a right immediately towards the closest ward. He halted at the doorway and took stock of the room. The walls were the same white and green as they were in the rest of the hospital but they were pasted with large, colourful stickers of smiling cartoon flowers, insects and animals. A children’s ward, no doubt. The room was suspiciously empty with no nurses or doctors around and only two children that he could see: one lying on his side to stare at the window and the other holding a pillow over her own head. They both had their backs turned to a bed shrouded by curtains, where the screaming came from.

Heart thumping, Harry charged towards the curtain and threw it open. The scene behind abruptly went on pause as the participants turned to him. A woman who appeared to be in her forties wearing a blue satin dress and shiny silver high heels and her face still heavily lathered in her New Year’s Eve party make-up had one hand clenched around a dreadfully bruised arm of a little blonde girl in yellow pyjamas. In her other hand she held a new, white plaster cast that Harry deduced must have been what they were fighting over. They stared at each other in silence until Harry’s eyes flickered back over the girl’s left arm, splotched with red, purple and green bruising and curved along the forearm in a sickeningly unnatural way. It made him go rigid all over. His grip tightened on the curtains, all of his joints locked up. He had to work his jaw to loosen it as he cleared his throat softly.

“Is something the matter?” he asked congenially.

The woman flapped her jaw wordlessly. She exchanged glances between Harry and her own hands as if even she couldn’t believe that he could address the two of them so casually. Eventually she huffed defensively. “She took her cast off! She’s not going to heal without it on.”

“It was making me itchy,” the little girl wailed.

“That’s not an excuse!” the woman said brusquely. “You weren’t supposed to take it off! You knew that!”

Harry frowned and looked at the empty arm cast sceptically. He’d had a few broken bones when he was a child and knew that plaster casts didn’t just slip off like gloves.

“Well, is this helping then?” he said. The woman gawked at him again. He gestured between her and the girl. “This. Is it working? Because – and this is just the advice of a stranger – but it might be more helpful to go and find her doctor. He can just give her a new one.”

“But then who’s going to watch her?” the woman argued primly.

“This is a hospital, not a playground,” Harry told her disbelievingly, “you can leave her for a little while.”

“Every time I turn my back nonsense like this happens.” She brandished the cast.

“Fine, then I’ll stay here and make sure that no ‘nonsense’ occurs,” Harry snapped.

They stared at each other in a small standoff. The woman’s lips pursed and her nose scrunched up just a twinge until she finally broke their small staring standoff with: “very well then.”

She dropped the cast on the bed and stormed towards Harry, yanking the curtain out of his grasp to march around him. He watched her stride out the door and didn’t look away until the harsh click of her heels began to fade. The little girl crawled up her bed to lean against the pillow with her arm cradled on her belly. Little beads of tears trickled down her face that she tried to wipe away with her good arm but they were only replaced with more. Harry looked at her empathetically. Despite knowing that he probably shouldn’t, he pulled up the simple metal-framed chair and sat beside the bed.

“Hey, don’t cry. The doctor’s going to come and make it all better,” he said cheerfully. She turned her face away, shielding it under a veil of blonde hair. “So, what’s your name?”

At first she didn’t respond. Harry started to wonder whether he should ask again or just leave it when she mumbled something.

“Sorry, I didn’t catch that.”

“Harriette.”

“Really? Wow, funny world we live in,” he grinned, trying to lift her mood. “We have the same name, only I’ve got the boy version – Harry – and yours is the girl version.”

She nodded slightly, still sobbing. He saw a blurred movement outside the frame of his glasses and looked down. Her fingers gingerly stroked her bruised arm, not the whole length just the part under her wrist where the woman had grabbed her.

“She’s awful to you, isn’t she?” he said quietly. She turned to him with a sniffle. “My aunt used to be like that to me when I was a kid; acting like everything was my fault and whatnot. She still does that, to be honest.”

“Are aunts always like that?” she asked.

“I don’t believe so,” Harry answered with a bit of surprise. He looked over his shoulder but the doorway was obscured behind curtains. “Was that your aunt?”

The little girl nodded. “She doesn’t like me very much. She thinks I’m always making trouble when I’m not doing anything. It’s not my fault that weird things happen.”

“Weird like what?”

She hesitated shyly, then replied in a small voice: “The car stops working a lot when she’s driving me somewhere. And sometimes things change places when I’m thinking about them. And Aunt Kate doesn’t want to believe me but I have superpowers but it’s a little bit dangerous to practice and I’m not very good but she thinks I break things a lot because I hate her.”

“She thinks you do it on purpose?”

“Yeah. Like this.” She gingerly lifted up her broken arm. “I told her over and over that I just fell off the ceiling but she said I was just having a tantrum because she made me go to bed.”

Harry hummed thoughtfully. “Falling off the ceiling is a little bit hard to believe.”

“But it’s completely true!”

“Alright, alright, I believe you.”

Harriette pouted. “You don’t believe me.”

“I really do!”

“Then prove it,” she pouted.

Harry sighed slowly. He gave the room around them another glance and listened intently for any sign of someone coming then turned to Harriette and said in a very low voice: “Okay, but just so you know, what I’m about to tell you is absolutely top secret. Can you keep a secret?”

She nodded quickly. Harry reached into his jacket and drew his wand out. Harriette gasped. He pointed it at the abandoned cast and it expanded to twice its size. His wand tip followed it as it delicately levitated off the bed and over her injured arm before gently slimming back to its original snug fit.

“I believe you because I’m a wizard,” Harry explained with a smile. “And you are a witch.”

Her jaw dropped. “I’m magic?” she whispered.

“And you can’t tell anyone,” Harry reminded her, putting a finger to his lips as he slipped his wand out of sight, “at least not yet.”

“I don’t think I’d want to tell Aunt Kate, she’d think I was even more awful.” She paused for a beat, then asked: “But really, I can’t tell anybody? Not even my best friend Jasmine?”

“Not even her,” Harry shook his head. “Though, I suppose you could tell your parents.”

Her face, which had been brightening incrementally over the course of the conversation, fell and Harry felt in the tightening of his stomach that he’d made a mistake.

“My parents died,” she said quietly. “Last year.”

Harry’s throat suddenly felt dry. “I’m so sorry.”

“We had a car crash.”

“‘We’? You were there?”

Harriette nodded. It fell silent as they were both suddenly at a loss of what to say. Harriette then rolled onto her side, shuddering with sobs and sniffles. Harry couldn’t think of anything to do other than rub her back soothingly.

“It’s going to be alright,” he told her. “My parents died too, when I was young.”

“I didn’t want mum and dad to die.”

“Me neither.”

She didn’t reply so they sat in silence for the next minute or so until the sound of high heels and bickering approached from the hallway. Aunt Kate strode into the ward beside a young man in scrubs with his face pinched in annoyance.

“I’m telling you, she took it off. Slipped out of it like nothing,” Kate squawked.

“As sincere as you sound, I doubt that absolutely,” the doctor replied as they walked up to Harriette’s bed and stopped at the end of it, side by side. Looking at Harriette simultaneously, they each made a contrary reaction. The doctor’s sceptical expression barely tweaked and he rolled his eyes while Kate gawked at the broken arm restrained properly in its cast.

“I’m telling you, she did take it off!” Kate exclaimed hurriedly. “She somehow put it back on the same way while I was gone. You,” she turned to Harry, “can tell us what happened. What did she do?”

Harry shrugged. “She didn’t do anything. She’s been in bed the whole time.”

“Liar! You were here when she had it off! So you must have seen what she did to put it back on!”

“She didn’t do anything,” Harry insisted, trying to restrain the smirk pulling the corners of his lips, although Harriette wasn’t quite so discrete with her sniggers. Kate’s cheeks puffed out like a big bad wolf half a second before she blew.

“THE TWO OF YOU ARE IN CAHOOTS! YOU’RE CONSPIRING TO HUMILIATE ME!”

“Look, Mrs Prewett, I think you’ve had a very long morning,” interjected the doctor, “and understandably you’re a bit stressed out by your niece’s accident. We have machine that makes tea and coffee that you’re welcome to, or if you’d like us to bring a temporary bed in here to sleep—”

“DON’T PATRONISE ME! I’M NOT HALLUCINATING! I’M NOT A CRAZY WOMAN!”

“Perhaps just a coffee then. Unless you prefer tea?” He looked at Harry questioningly and asked: “Tea? Coffee?”

“Er, thanks but no thanks, I’d best be off,” Harry excused, keeping his eye on Kate’s stormy face as he stood up. “I left my flat in a hurry so I ought to get back and, uh, make sure I haven’t left anything on. Nice meeting you, doctor, thanks for taking care of Harri,” he leaned forward to shake hands with the doctor then had to slip away quickly to avoid Kate’s grab for his sleeve. “See you round… Kate.”

He gave a short wave and then made a break for the exit.

“Hold on just one minute!” Kate thundered. “I see what you’re doing here! Don’t think I’ll let you escape.”

She was almost hot on his heels when the doctor added: “Are you sure you wouldn’t like a place to sleep—?”

“I’M NOT A CHILD!”

As she rounded on the doctor Harry glanced across the ward. The girl with the pillow was now sitting up with her arms folded and a disgruntled expression glaring at the curtain one bed over. She spied Harry leaving and stuck her tongue out, waving her index fingers around her ears and going cross-eyed. Harry had to press his lips together to keep from laughing as he ducked out of the room.


End file.
